Monthly Archives: December 2012

Re. post ‘Bird’s Eye View of the Middle East’. There is no doubt that the first casualties of conflict are the animals – think ‘War Horse’. I remember in the mid-Eighties flying in to Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama’s HQ camp … Continue reading →

The eastern part of the DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) offers a ‘case-book’ examination of the matrix between conflict and post-conflict rebuilding against a background of biodiversity destruction. Whether it is from fighting or the mass dispersal of … Continue reading →

In his recent book, ‘House of Stone’, Anthony Shadid, a former foreign correspondent for The New York Times, goes back to his ancestral Lebanese roots to rebuild an old family home (in a bizarre and sad twist of fate Shadid, … Continue reading →

In the wake of the record 1.9 billion dollar fine imposed on HSBC for ‘laundering’ the profits of Mexican drug cartels the question arises of whether the bank would be liable in some part for the environmental damage caused both … Continue reading →

As super-power rivalry between India and China widens so the region of Assam in India’s north-east ‘shoulder’ becomes ever more significant given its proximity to both China and Myanmar and its borders with Bhutan and Bangla Desh. Internally Assam has … Continue reading →

War has traditionally been conceived, and studied, as a uniquely human phenomenon since humans are seen as the agents of war: the principal cause of war, its main protagonists, practitioners, and victims. The Marjan Centre for the Study of Conflict … Continue reading →

Gold miners in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) no longer fear homicidal warlords and militias but they are still being ruthlessly exploited – by a plague of corrupt government officials, bureaucrats and security personnel, who all … Continue reading →